 | I. Pelayo |  |
1. I.
When the eyes of the stunned and suffering Amri
were opened to the light, he found himself in the chamber
of the beautiful Urraca. She had been, and was
still, busy in attendance upon him. Her hand had
dressed his wound, which was rather severe than dangerous;
she had administered the cooling beverage,
and her attentions had been unrelaxing, like those of the
fondest and most devoted wife. The gladness which
shone in her eyes as she beheld his unclosing, was a
rebuke to his spirit, which he understood, if he did not
feel.
“How is it with thee now, Amri?” she demanded of
him, in a voice of the utmost tenderness, very different
from that aroused and sternly passionate tone which we
have heard her employing to the same person in a preceding
interview. He answered her in a voice of studied
fondness, and with words fitly calculated to gloss over
his falsehood and conceal his indifference.
“Ah, dearest Urraca, how much do I owe to thy
care and watchfulness! Thou hast saved my life, I
know, and I owe it to thee now if I had not willed it to
thee before. Thou hast been to me all—henceforward
I will be all to thee.”
The hypocrite played his part successfully; and, willing
dependant Urraca paused not calmly to analyze or inquire
into the truth of his declarations. She took them
upon trust. She did not look to see if the eye of Amri
met hers with unblenching earnestness as he addressed
her; she did not remark that the voice was schooled
into effort, and was unbroken and even while he was
uttering words of passionate gratitude and warm affection.
It was enough for her that the sense which they
conveyed was sweet; she did not ask—perhaps she
feared to ask—if they were the words of truth. Alas!
how commonly do we forego the true for the sweet;
how readily do we suffer ourselves to be beguiled by the
one into a disregard and forgetfulness of the other;
and how bitterly do we pay, in after days, for the sad
error of such beguiling moments! She replied to him
with all the fondness of a love which the show of a
proper feeling in him had pleased and satisfied.
“Ah, Amri, thy words are sweet—sweeter to me
than all the gifts and all the worship of the proudest
Goth that ever humbled himself in my train. How glad
would I be to believe thee, Amri. Dost thou not deceive
me, dearest? Art thou not glozing, that I may
not see or suspect thy falsehood? I fear me thou dost
play me false, and thy words are those of the serpent,
words of guile and of untruth. Yet, be it so, Amri—be
it so. Speak to me falsely, but sweetly—and, if thou
dost me wrong in thy heart, Amri, let the secret be withheld
from my ears, and I forgive thee the wrong.”
“Sweet Urraca, thou knowest that I wrong thee not.
How could I wrong a love true, and sweet, and devoted
as is thine? Were I moved to wrong thee, wanting in
the natural passion which should respond to thine, thy
truth would counsel me that I should do thee justice,
and pay homage to the affection which I yet might never
feel. I should feign the love for thee which thou deservest,
even though my cold heart entertained it not.”
“But thou dost not feign—thou dost feel, my Amri?”
cried the woman, hastily, and with some symptoms of
apprehension. He put his hand upon his bosom, and
invoked the God of Israel to approve his sincerity.
“Thy God—my God! They have both heard thee,
Amri!” she exclaimed, laying her hand upon his arm,
and looking for a moment inquiringly into his face;
then, with a fond smile, throwing herself upon his bosom,
she cried, passionately and aloud, the satisfaction which
she felt.
“I must—I will believe thee, Amri. I dare not
doubt thee longer, Amri, though many are the doubts
which have come to chide me with the confidence I
have given thee; and often, even when thou didst seem
most loving and most true, was there something that
whispered in my heart, telling me to believe thee not—
to heed none of thy professions. I will not hear to this
evil tempter—I will believe that thou dost love me.”
“I do—I do love thee, Urraca. Thou must believe,
and confide to me always.”
“I will—I must—even as thou sayest, Amri!” she
responded; but with one of those sudden and passionate
transitions which marked her ungovernable and ill-schooled
spirit, her tone changed, even as she said
these words; and with a fiery glance of the eye, and an
uplifted finger, starting at the same time away from his
embrace, she looked upon him threateningly, while she
spoke the very doubts which she had determined to dismiss.
“Yet, if thou shouldst deceive me—if—oh, Amri, I
could have slain thee with my own hands but the last
night, when I looked upon thee and esteemed thee a
traitor to my love. My hand was upon this dagger”—
and, while she spoke, she drew it from her bosom and
held it on high—“and, but that thy words were quick,
and warmed with a devotion which was sweet to my
heart, I had driven its biting blade into the very warmest
parts of thine!”
“Urraca!” was the only word which the lips of
Amri uttered in reply to this passionate exhortation.
She turned a fond woman-glance once more upon him,
while she flung the dagger from her to a distant corner
of the chamber.
“I will not trust myself to hold it again in my hands,
for fear that it should be too ready, in some sad hour,
obedient to my wilful heart. Fear me not, Amri; I do
now believe thee—I will wrong thee never again.”
But he did fear her. He knew too well how tumultuously
the storm of passion in her soul bore along with
it every consideration, every stay of reason, every obstacle
which prudence and a calm thought might will to
oppose against feverish impatience and the phrensy of a
jealous mood.
“I do fear thee,” he said to himself, even while she
embraced him and while he embraced her—“I do fear
thee, and I were a fool not to provide against this fear.
I will not fear thee long.”
Such were the shadows of his thought, passing cloudily
over his mind, and intimating the commission of
other and greater crimes as necessary to his extrication
from the past. But neither by word nor look did he
convey to her mind a solitary suspicion of that which
was passing through his own. He played the part of
the adoring lover—the confiding, fond husband—one
having happiness, and free from disquiet or discontent.
Little did she dream while believing, and happy to believe,
that in his thought he had already, with felon spirit,
resolved to penetrate the sanctuary of her life—to throw
down and trample into dust and darkness the sacred and
sweet, though perhaps impure, fires which were burning
upon its altars.
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